vacuum, the sense of youthful misery, that Sasha had left behind her. He was older now, for one thing. But Estelle had become a habit, her passing gave him a transient loneliness.
That night, however, Giraldy, as though mad with chagrin, filled the Bruselas Street flat with guests. The sound of his maliciously gay piano-playing streamed through the open doors and lighted windows until a late hour. There was dancing and there was drinking, and silhouettes drifted in and out of the shadowy patio, whispering and pausing to unite in a hurried embrace. The Señora was there, with her loud mock-English and her pomaded aviator-husband, and the couple from Galveston; the jockey, blue-shirted and jacketless, and the two birds of paradise whom only yesterday Estelle had turned from the door, boisterous now with gratified resentment. One of them came in to Blair to ask his help in finding some sort of black veil or mantle. She was going to give an impersonation of Estelle taking the vows.
Genaro Hopley-Woolrich, second from left, as he looked in December 1898 when he was in his middle to late twenties.
Cornell Woolrich as he looked in the late 1920s when he was roughly the age of his father in the picture on the opposite page.
CHAPTER THREE
His Friend
1
Suddenly Blair was sixteen and was found to be not quite sufficiently educated. He could read and write (but never did) and add a little and draw people’s faces with considerable accuracy (and often did), and spoke two languages and thought in either one with equal ease, but he had long since forgotten what countries bordered the Caspian Sea and who followed Elizabeth on the throne of England—or even that she had been on the throne of England at any time.
This all came out one evening when he had been unwise enough to sample a quantity of whisky and water in the presence of a number of people. Their attention was drawn to him, and someone asked what he did.
“Nothing,” answered Giraldy succinctly.
A shower of suggestions immediately descended from all sides.
“Send him to the States, this is no country for a growing boy.”
“In France are the best schools,” observed one of the butterflies sagely.
Giraldy turned to her and said, “Then, will you pay for the passage?”
She parted her rouged lips in a derisive smile. “If I had the monee to go back, you think I would be here?”
Blair ended the discussion as far as he himself was concerned by turning his back on the lot of them and going in to bed. He felt sure, however, that it proceeded uninterruptedly for some little time after that. All the next day, out in the sunshine with Mariquita, he had a strange feeling that every minute must be made to count, that all this was coming swiftly to an end. Things he had never taken notice of before suddenly became precious—the golden flood of sunshine, the apoplectic bougainvillea bursting over the tops of flaky pastel walls and seeming to crack them asunder where some forgotten earthquake had left its marks, the infinitely old houses, built in the time of sedan chairs and powdered heads and the Inquisition, already old when Wellington was fighting Waterloo, a few with wires for transmitting electric current strung along the open faces of their striped and garlanded inner walls, brown and gray now where once they had been rose and blue, last papered perhaps when heads were falling into the guillotine baskets of far-away Paris, the Paris that to-day once again sent its birds of paradise to the four quarters of the earth, fleeing from the roar of cannon and the death- agonies of the musical-powder-box civilization they had known.
Sixteen though he was, the prospect of a change held no delight in it for Blair. The things he saw about him had endeared themselves to him through a slow succession of years. Here every stone, every tree, every surrounding, counted for something and could not be lightly
That night, however, Giraldy, as though mad with chagrin, filled the Bruselas Street flat with guests. The sound of his maliciously gay piano-playing streamed through the open doors and lighted windows until a late hour. There was dancing and there was drinking, and silhouettes drifted in and out of the shadowy patio, whispering and pausing to unite in a hurried embrace. The Señora was there, with her loud mock-English and her pomaded aviator-husband, and the couple from Galveston; the jockey, blue-shirted and jacketless, and the two birds of paradise whom only yesterday Estelle had turned from the door, boisterous now with gratified resentment. One of them came in to Blair to ask his help in finding some sort of black veil or mantle. She was going to give an impersonation of Estelle taking the vows.
Genaro Hopley-Woolrich, second from left, as he looked in December 1898 when he was in his middle to late twenties.
Cornell Woolrich as he looked in the late 1920s when he was roughly the age of his father in the picture on the opposite page.
CHAPTER THREE
His Friend
1
Suddenly Blair was sixteen and was found to be not quite sufficiently educated. He could read and write (but never did) and add a little and draw people’s faces with considerable accuracy (and often did), and spoke two languages and thought in either one with equal ease, but he had long since forgotten what countries bordered the Caspian Sea and who followed Elizabeth on the throne of England—or even that she had been on the throne of England at any time.
This all came out one evening when he had been unwise enough to sample a quantity of whisky and water in the presence of a number of people. Their attention was drawn to him, and someone asked what he did.
“Nothing,” answered Giraldy succinctly.
A shower of suggestions immediately descended from all sides.
“Send him to the States, this is no country for a growing boy.”
“In France are the best schools,” observed one of the butterflies sagely.
Giraldy turned to her and said, “Then, will you pay for the passage?”
She parted her rouged lips in a derisive smile. “If I had the monee to go back, you think I would be here?”
Blair ended the discussion as far as he himself was concerned by turning his back on the lot of them and going in to bed. He felt sure, however, that it proceeded uninterruptedly for some little time after that. All the next day, out in the sunshine with Mariquita, he had a strange feeling that every minute must be made to count, that all this was coming swiftly to an end. Things he had never taken notice of before suddenly became precious—the golden flood of sunshine, the apoplectic bougainvillea bursting over the tops of flaky pastel walls and seeming to crack them asunder where some forgotten earthquake had left its marks, the infinitely old houses, built in the time of sedan chairs and powdered heads and the Inquisition, already old when Wellington was fighting Waterloo, a few with wires for transmitting electric current strung along the open faces of their striped and garlanded inner walls, brown and gray now where once they had been rose and blue, last papered perhaps when heads were falling into the guillotine baskets of far-away Paris, the Paris that to-day once again sent its birds of paradise to the four quarters of the earth, fleeing from the roar of cannon and the death- agonies of the musical-powder-box civilization they had known.
Sixteen though he was, the prospect of a change held no delight in it for Blair. The things he saw about him had endeared themselves to him through a slow succession of years. Here every stone, every tree, every surrounding, counted for something and could not be lightly
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